All colleges hit by ransomware got data back, says survey

A global survey of 200 higher education institutions found that 100% of colleges were able to restore their data following a ransomware attack.

The survey, published last week by the British cybersecurity firm Sophos, reported that rates of ransomware attacks are increasing among higher education institutions, with 44% of respondents reporting attacks in 2021, 64% reporting attacks in 2022, and 79% reporting attacks this year.

Among colleges that were attacked, 73% had their data encrypted by hackers, 25% stopped the attack before data was encrypted and 1% did not have their data encrypted but were still held to ransom, the survey said.

Higher education survey respondents reported using varying methods to restore data targeted by cybercriminals, with 63% saying they used backups to restore data and 56% saying they paid ransom to get the data back.

The average cost of recovering data in 2023 was $1.06 million among higher education institutions — down from last year when higher education institutions reported spending $1.42 million on data recovery. This finding suggests that higher education organizations are getting better at recovering from attacks at a lower cost since ransom demands have increased over time, the report said.

Institutions that paid ransom demands to recover their data spent an estimated $1.31 million on data recovery, compared to $980,000 spent by institutions that relied exclusively on using backups to restore data access.